It has become one of the internet's hottest trends. Ever since Facebook announced that it would cease to be Facebook, fear to open the fridge, because the most popular industry keywords are popping out of it, Meta, the new Facebook, NFT, internet 3.0. What is it all about? How is it to be understood by the common man?
To understand what the point is to buy a T-shirt in Metaverse, or to do grocery shopping in it, as if you could not buy it via Facebook now, you have to go back a bit. We do not make any guarantees that you will make sense of this, but you will understand the premise.
What's the matter with metavers?
Usually it starts with a vision, and that is also where we start the text. The vision is to create a metaversum or metaverse, in this context of a virtual world in the real world. The real and virtual worlds are much more intertwining, the latter are much more visually and functionally attractive. In their own perverse way, our metaverse will resemble today's behavior. Instead of spending time on the perfect Instagram filter, we will spend it on choosing a hair style or outfit for our avatar. In the metaverse, we are supposed to be three-dimensional as in real life.
The norm today, addiction 20 years ago
The vision is based on the undeniable assumption that the virtual world offers more freedom. Another assumption is people's behavior. Recent research shows that a Pole spends more than 6 hours a day in front of the screen. An American until 9. 20 years ago such people would be considered addicts. The world has changed, habits have changed, and business forges iron while it is hot. Facebook is already hitting the ceiling when it comes to ad space. And investors want increases. Facebook, no matter what to say about it, knows how to shape needs and then meet them, while earning money. Therefore, it will create a completely new, as yet unwritten space for earning.
Coming back to Facebook, the company jumped into that vision. Changed its name to Meta, it will build a space for VR and AR (virtual reality and augmented reality) communication and interaction. The biggest challenge is unification. The virtual world - as intended - is to be wide. The concept assumes common solutions of many companies, not multiple virtual worlds, each from a different corporation.
But there is also no need to count that the world's corporations will speak with one voice, it is possible that in the future there will be a growing number of large metavers gathering the services of befriended companies. The social thread is the key here, so Facebook wins in this. Something that attracts a specific crowd of people to a given place.
Other companies followed the direction indicated by Facebook. Even Walmart has announced that it will create a virtual store there. In simple terms, we will be transferred to a virtual supermarket, we will use our paws to move there, point to products, we will be accompanied by an assistant, after we finish shopping, we leave, and the products in physical form are delivered to us at a specified time. The whole thing is a bit like the game "Sims".